Mr Frawley, acting on a complaint brought on behalf of some of those caught up in the society’s fall, focused on DETI’s legal responsibility to scrutinise the activities of the PMS.

He found “maladministration” in DETI’s examination of the PMS’s annual return and said a “very limited administrative check” was “wholly inadequate”.

Mr Frawley said the consequence of this was that the department failed to identify that the PMS was acting outside of its legislated activities and was working in a way that required FSA regulation. He said those failings contributed to the “injustice experienced by members of the PMS preventing them of availing of the compensation scheme”. [added emphasis]

But the ombudsman stressed that DETI’s actions were not the sole cause of the PMS’s troubles and said society members did not require additional compensation above the package agreed in 2011.

It’s just as well then, as Mr Justice Gillen noted, that our ministers “are accountable to the Assembly where they are likely to be questioned and scrutinised”…